1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to maps of the earth's continents and to methods of manufacturing such maps. More specifically, the invention relates to maps of the earth that have more accurate projections, that may be constructed by laypersons, and which may be used to support the inventor's hypothesis that the continents originated as a result of collision of a gigantic meteor-like body with an ocean-covered earth.
2. Prior Art
One of the most striking features of the planet earth is the lopsidedness of its surface. The majority of landmasses are gathered in one hemisphere (continental hemisphere) instead of dispersed all over the sphere at random. As stated in Anatomy of the Earth, by Andre Cailleux (English version published by The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1968), “A hemisphere centered on the estuary of the river Loire in France is almost half covered by land (47 percent) and may be called the continental hemisphere whereas the complementary half of the globe, dominated by the Pacific Ocean, bears only 11 percent land and is thus the oceanic hemisphere.”
If the earth were perfectly round, seawater would have a mean level and would extend into places where the continents and other landmasses are presently situated. This presumed mean sea level is called geoid.
But then, why does the earth's actual deviation from geoid occur in a form of the lopsidedness of the continental hemisphere? Although the earth is sometimes said to be “pear-shaped”, the lopsidedness of the continental hemisphere has never been referred to with a similar analogy, to my knowledge. I believe that the shape of the earth should be viewed as a “round acorn with a cap on it”. Naturally, this is an exaggeration, since the anomalies of its surface are negligible in comparison with its size.
However, the earth is often regarded as an ellipsoid because it has equatorial bulge due to centrifugal force from the earth's rotation. The difference between polar and equatorial radii is 21.4 km and the difference between the highest and the lowest surface features is 20.3 km. In other words, the earth has two anomalous bulges of about the same order at the equator and on the continental hemisphere. And yet, the intrinsic cause of the hemispheric bulge is unknown. Gravitation exerts a rather negative force on the formation of a bulge, as I will discuss below. From this fact, I sought an extraneous cause: I posit that, in the early stage of the earth's history, a gigantic meteor-like body broke up in the air and fell as chunks of lava onto a proto-earth covered solely by the ocean. I named this lost heavenly body “Yasoon” (Yasuo-moon), because I originally thought it was another moon revolving around the proto-earth. Incidentally, some books call the “continental hemisphere” the “land hemisphere” and the “oceanic hemisphere” the “water hemisphere”. I prefer the term “continental-oceanic hemispheres” for both, because they suggest the character of hemispheres more clearly.
Strange as it may seem, there are few theories on the origin of the earth's continents, unlike the origin of the moon. Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), famous for his theory of continental drift, published “The Origin of the Continents and Oceans” in 1915. In the book, he theorized that all of the continents were united in a single landmass called Pangaea (pan, all; gaea, earth, in Greek), which was torn apart during the Mesozoic era (about 225-65 million years ago). But he didn't discuss how and why the supercontinent Pangaea came into being. Some scientists, such as Howard B. Baker and Osmond Fisher, extended a hypothesis of George Darwin. He postulated that the earth, during a period after it formed a core, was at one time spinning extremely fast. It bulged so much at the equator that eventually a small blob spun off, becoming the moon. The resulting void or scar in the crust formed the Pacific Ocean basin. Baker, Fisher, and others theorized that the remaining continental fragments drifted toward this gigantic scar. This notion accounts for the origin of the continents somehow, but only as a by-product.
People may be so familiar with the existence of the continents that they do not question their origin. Most islanders never ask why an island is there, whereas most mountaineers never question a mountain's origin. They think the world was unchanged from its beginning. So, to almost all of them the question of the origin of the continents may never have occurred. However, considering the earth's size, the existence of the continental hemisphere or the assumption of the supercontinent Pangaea is unusual. The enormous force of gravitation should not allow such a protuberance on a round planet.
In the earth's interior, the largest layer between the crust and core is called the mantle. According to the most influential geophysical theory, although the mantle is made of rigid material, it flows and has convection currents. Geologists also believe that the continents were formed from mantle material. Could the unevenness of the earth's surface really occur in spite of the churning or mixing activity of mantle convection? If they insist that material for the continents is lighter than the mantle material, it invites another question: How could the lighter material enter into the deep interior of the earth in the first place? In order to assure the horizontal movement of the earth's crust, the mantle has to be in a plastic state. But if it is plastic, the material floating over it should have a tendency to form a flat layer like oil on water or be dispersed all over as fragments or islands by the earth's gravitational pull to the center of the earth.
Speaking of the displacement of continents instead of their origin, there were many precedents to Wegener's theory. Since circa 1600, many scientists and philosophers have noticed the similarity of the coastlines on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Because the most popular world maps are drawn with the Mercator projection and its variations, Europeans and Americans are familiar with the parallel coastlines of the Atlantic, as Wegener's words. “The first notion of the displacement of continents came to me in 1910 when, on studying the map of the world, I was impressed by the congruency of both sides of the Atlantic coasts.” Incidentally, Japanese use Pacific-centered world maps.
Sometimes a graphic image influences people's minds more than logic. They believe explanations about continental drift, mantle convection, seafloor spreading, mantle plumes (narrow columns of hot mantle rock, more localized than convection currents), mountain building, and other geophysical concepts that scientists offer with beautifully drawn illustrations. However, none of such phenomena has been proven experimentally. We all know of thermal convection occurs in a pot of water, but insofar as I am aware, no one has successfully reproduced a convection current forming a linear spreading center like the mid-oceanic ridge in liquids.
Besides such illustrations, a map produced by Marie Tharp influenced the acceptance of the theories of seafloor spreading and continental drift. She worked with Bruce Heezen, mapping the ocean floors of the world, beginning in 1952 and completing this task in 1977. They revealed a 40,000-mile-long mountain range, called mid-oceanic ridge, curling through all the oceans of the world like a giant dragon. Especially in the Atlantic Ocean, it fits like a jigsaw puzzle with both sides of coastline. It silenced even the fiercest objections against the continental drift theory and its descendants. There are no better explanations than the one that the sea floor formed at the crest of the mid-Atlantic ridge and shoved the continents of both sides horizontally away from the ridge crest. Mark Monmonier, professor of geography at Syracuse University said, “Her maps have made sea-floor spreading seem quite natural and almost obvious. They really have been able to explain a phenomenon that a lot of people have found rather arcane and, in some case, maybe improbable. In other words, if you have a good illustration that is realistic, it can not only show how something operated, but basically presents a convincing argument that that's the way it is.” As he indicated, the power of a map is enormous.
In addition, I speculate that world maps of the predominant projection methods programmed people's minds to accept the theory subconsciously. The widely used world maps show the equator in the middle and the North Pole at top. Since these maps don't show the north end of the Atlantic Ocean, which is someplace in the Arctic Ocean, and the coastlines of both sides of the Atlantic are similar, one feels as if the continents could slide horizontally along the latitude lines easily. In reality, the Arctic Ocean is contiguous the Atlantic Ocean or rather a part of it. So instead of sliding parallel, the Atlantic Ocean seems to crack open like a folding fan pivoting at a Siberian coast.
Only a globe can represent the true form of the earth. The drawing of a globe transformed on a flat surface is called a map projection. But it is impossible to transform a curved surface into a plane surface without distortion. Since there are many different types of distortion, more than a hundred map projections have been devised. They have tried to suit various needs and purposes by preserving or sacrificing certain properties of map, such as shape, area, distance, and direction.
The most popular projection for a world map is the Mercator projection, named after a Flemish cartographer. This is the only projection most laypersons know by name. The Mercator is a map projection of the so-called cylindrical type, which is drawn fully on a rectangular medium developed from a cylinder rolling around a globe. It shows almost the whole world simply and does not seem to distort shapes. That's why it has been a favorite schoolroom map. Its enlargement of northern areas makes it easy to see certain small European countries, which in another kind of map of the same size and scale would be almost invisible. Moreover, all compass directions appear as straight lines, making it a valuable navigational tool.
However, to some experts, Mercator is an abhorrent projection. John B. Garver, Jr., Chief Cartographer of the National Geographic Society, wrote in the National Geographic (December 1988), “More often than not in those days, world maps were drawn on the Mercator projection, which Robinson admits having been ‘awfully sick of’. Years earlier, at the end of World War I, Editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor had also been irked by the Mercator. He called it ‘atrocious’ for a world reference map.”
The Mercator has sown the seeds of various misconceptions. According to it, Greenland is three times its normal size and appears much larger than South America, although in fact it is only about an eighth the size. The shape of Antarctica is swollen so grotesquely that nobody can imagine the original shape of that continent.
Another important misconception deriving from the Mercator is that it fails to show the shortest, most direct route between two points on the earth's surface. For instance, people may think they fly somewhere in the Pacific near Honolulu when traveling from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Actually, they fly along the coastlines of the continents all the way via Aleutian Islands. By the same token, if they fly from New York to London, they may have an image of crossing the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. In fact, they fly over the Canadian lands for a while and then over the northern edge of the Atlantic Ocean near Greenland.
The National Geographic Society adopted the Van der Grinten projection in 1922 as the Society's standard reference world map and Arthur Robinson's projection in 1988, but these are not optimal solutions to the Mercator problem. The Robinson projection contains a large amount of distortion: Greenland is shown 60 percent larger than it really is. The problem of the shortest air route is not solved either.
The Mollweide, the Peter, and other equal-area map projections, on the other hand, depict all regions of the earth in correct relative size. But they distort the shapes of the continents severely. Most uninterrupted world map projections, including the ones discussed above, distort and deform lands in one or more regions.
The best world map projection showing us correct relative sizes and shapes of the continents is Dymaxion Air-Ocean world map by Buckminster Fuller. His original map (U.S. Pat. No. 2,393,676, January 1946) is quite different from his later version, copyrighted in 1954. He used a non-symmetrical polyhedron, consisting of six square and eight triangular facets. But unfortunately, this original map had severe discontinuity problems. For example, the Eurasian Continent had severed top and bottom halves. The later version solved this problem by replacing the combination of square and triangular facets with twenty equilateral triangles. Using this form of an icosahedron, he was able to accurately depict the whole earth on a flat map with only a small bit of distortion distributed among the triangles uniformly without breaks in any of the continental contours.
The later version represents a great accomplishment since all the breaks occur completely within the oceans and keep the division of the landmasses to a minimum. However, this in turn means that no layperson can change the configuration at will. In fact, I could not produce a map of the continental hemisphere from it. In general, there are no books that provide any instruction how one can make a world map on their own. A map projection seems to require professional skill and a mathematical background.
Although Fuller's projection can be folded into a solid approximating the globe, the map itself does not remind us of the earth's roundness. This remainder of the roundness of the earth was claimed as a strong point for the Robinson projection, though it is elliptical.
Fuller claimed that his projection is able to show the shortest air routes between landmasses, but its ability is a limited one because the angles between outer facets make them discontinuous. For instance, one can hardly figure out the shortest air route between South America and Africa.
Although there are many continental (land) hemisphere maps on the Azimuthal (equal-area, Equidistant or perspective) projection in books and web sites, I could not find any world maps based on the continental hemisphere. Even though Frye's extension of an oblique Azimuthal Equidistant hemisphere shows interrupted landmasses in the continental hemisphere extended to complete their contours, it is not intended to produce a world map. As Richard Darlberg said, “The optimum land hemisphere centered in France excludes southern South America, Antarctica, New Zealand, Australia, and southern Asia. This creates major problems in fully representing the continents since scale variations and distortions increase markedly as coverage extends into the second hemisphere. One approach was introduced by Frye in 1895 to illustrate land-based features with the Atlantic and Arctic basins on one side and much of the Pacific Ocean omitted.” In the actual map Antarctica is also omitted.
In conclusion, there are many prior-art maps in geophysics and cartography but they are not satisfactory because;                1. There is no theory describing how and why the continents take their shapes, considering the force of the earth's gravity.        2. A world map reflecting the real shapes of the continents is indispensable when discussing their origin but there is no such map.        3. Many popular world maps, especially the Mercator projection, have misled people's conceptions about the relative sizes and shapes of the continents.        4. A world map projection is too complicated and difficult for laypersons to make on their own.        5. The shortest air routes between most of the landmasses are not apparent in many popular world maps.        6. There is no full-scale world map using the continental and the oceanic hemispheres.        